Adam Kazwell is...somewhat concerned

The future of music?

The future of music???

So Apple released its new iTunes service today, and maybe I haven't drank enough of the Steve Jobs Kool-aid yet, but should I be excited about something? A Salon writer calls the iTunes service the future of music, Hilary (insert your own nasty comment here) Rosen said "The Apple system has the potential to do for music sales what the Walkman did for the cassette".  You're kidding right?

I have so many points to make, I don't even know where to begin. How bout with the service? In a nutshell, it allows you to buy music the same way you would listen to music you already own. Browse for a song, click play and boom, you just bought a new single (or how about dingle - digital single?) no credit card verification, (almost) no restrictions on how and where you listen to the song. That's all well and good, but it's definitely not a revolutionary idea. All Apple did was get music execs to agree that people should have as little friction as possible when buying and listening to music. I'm sure that took a heroic effort from Steve Jobs and Apple to reach that decision, but it shouldn't have (the delay was most likely caused by Industry rule number #4080....) The iTunes service is what people have wanted since music was first available for purchase on-line. It's a shame it's taken this long to make it a reality.

Alright, now for some of the questions posed in the article.
1. Willl the iTunes service be the death of the full length album
2. How will the Top 40 change?

#1: I hope not. I think that's one of music's bigger problems - no one listens to a complete album. I used to only buy singles because I could never find a full CD with more than 3 songs that I liked. Then I started listening to better music and almost always would rather have the full album instead of a few singles. Here's why: More often then not, my favorite song on an album isn't one of the 1 or 2 songs released to the radio. How would I be able to find these gems if I only got one or two songs per group. Can you imagine downloading only one Radiohead song, one Flaming Lips song, or one Jeff Buckley song? You'd miss so much of what makes an artist/group great if you only sampled their material in bit size pieces.

#2: I don't think the Top 40 will change at all. The Top 40 is made for buying singles. Why get the whole album when all you want is the one song that everyone's singing along to on Kiss FM?

Now, what do I want out of a music service:
Screw the per song pricing, I want all you can eat, buffet style pricing. I want to get every song ever made by Aphex Twin, and I want it all for $20 bucks. And I want $10 of those bucks to go directly to Aphex Twin, not his marketing manager or PR guy, or press secretary. I want to be able to bid on CD prices. If I'm downloading some Poi Dog Pondering CD that no one's bought in 10 years, then I don't want to pay $18.99 like it's brand new. I want the music service to have TiVo/NetFlix like brains that can suggest other songs or groups that I might enjoy. And I want a music player can hold every song I've ever heard (this isn't too far off, a 100-200GB player would be more than enough for a lifetime worth of music, especially with Apple's new compression format) and I want it to be the size of a 20 piece pack of gum.

And I want it all by next Christmas.

Thanks.

I don't want to write anymore

Just skip the irony and listen for a sec. I had a few different reasons for creating this site:

1. influence: share ideas/theories
2. inspire: get people to take action
3. inform: through links, point out cool shit
4. document/journal: proof of where I've been, where I'm going
5. discuss: get different viewpoints
6. design: layout information in clear, unique, user friendly fashion

And I wanted this site to develop based on the following priority: 1,2,3,4,6,5. But here's the thing, I don't think #1's in the picture anymore. I mostly have cropped the list down to 3,2, and 4. I hope to eventually include 5 and 6, but that'll take some time for me to learn some new programs (or maybe just start using Typepad instead). But I haven't been feeling the need to share any ideas/theories lately. Maybe it's the lack of stuff to share or the fear that what I share won't be insightful, but really I think it's due to the fact that influencing people takes too much time. For now, I'm just happy sharing interesting stuff I find on the Information Superhighway (worst name ever).

Life in my apartment

For those of you not living with me - which is everyone, here's what you're missing out on. Let's have a look at all the different items in the picture:

1. Laptop with banned MU t-shirt acting as heat shield to protect ping pong table/work desk/dining table.
2. Screenshot of ESPN's game tracker (aka: my version of television) displayed on laptop.
3. To the laptop's right: two phone bills/coasters, containter of salted almonds from Sam's, empty Ozarka water bottle and a rotting banana peel.
4. Above the laptop: plate with wallet and pair of socks, with keys hidden behind the monitor.
5. Far above the laptop: ping pong paddle and one more unpaid bill.

I hope all you kids out there are paying attention to the theme of this picture...Every item in your apt/house can serve multiple purposes and unpaid bills (especially late ones) make the best coasters.

If you'd like a larger version of the above image, go here.

By the way - you just enjoyed the first picture to appear on this blog! I know, it's sets a high standard to beat, but I'm up for the challenge.

target="blank"

Well, that was easy. Now when clicking on links a new browsing window will automatically be opened up. And that's just the way I like it.

Looks like I'm on the right path

Turns out I have one thing in common with two people who I think are doing cool things on-line (Jason Kottke and Philip Kaplan). I think Kaplan's gotten a bunch of them, based on the description of himself that he gave at this year's SXSW (Question: What about maintaining journalistic integrity of your site? Kaplan's Answer: Not a journalist, no integrity. Word.) and I'm not sure how many Jason's gotten, but it's at least one.

Error Code #203

Hmmm, seems like Blogger has a little trouble handling &'s and #''s and any other "high-ASCII characters". What you say? Let's see what their solution is:

To fix the problem: We're working on allowing anything that can be typed into a web form to get into the Blogger system safely, but for now, check your template and posts for characters that are outside of the standard ASCII character set. Things like ampersands (&) may also occasionally cause this.

So basically it means I can't archive my site until I remove all the &'s, #'s and other @#$% In the meantime, ALL posts will be listed on the main page - hope you've got a broadband connection.

Soon to be on a t-shirt near you

"For all we know, the Matrix could be a documentary."

Have you noticed that I'm starting to quote people left and right on this page??? Before it was all me, mister creative, but lately it's been like - shit, I couldn't have said it any better than that. See "Dude, it's been done", "Mental Jujitsu", and the above Matrix quote.

"I good you bid evening."
-Jason Lee, acting drunk in Vanilla Sky

Crap, I'm getting old

Not physically, but mentally. I noticed a different set of beliefs over the weekend. Before I used to think that I had a little control over the universe, that if you do things right, you come out on top. It's not to say that I thought the good guy always won or that life is always fair. But that if I did my best or did something good, that I could somehow infuence the outcome of whatever it was I wanted. These examples mostly apply to moments as a spectator in an event I really did have no control over (read: sports). Like if I did all my homework on time the Bulls would beat the Pistons (they did) or if I got a lot done at work Marquette would be Kentucky (they did) Over the years there were a few exceptions, but it was never anything big. So recently I started thinking about if you were a participant in these events, wouldn't you try and do all that was good and fair to come out on top? What I realized lately is that it doesn't matter. Sure, you can work you ass off and be good and nice and all those other things and still get beat by 30 in the biggest game of your life. Or you can stay all 4 years and play for a coach you love and who loves you and yet still lose the game. Nothing personal, just wasn't meant to be. How do you deal with that defeat, how do you tell yourself to work hard to be the best when sometimes you're up against somebody who's just not only just as good but better?

Sorry to end on such a positive note. How bout this ending instead:

Best rhyme that I've heard in a non-rap song..."He couldn't committ to her mental jujitsu" - from some song on XMU.

2 good articles in Wired

...and I'm not even past pg 30

Maybe Wired's having a little comeback...They've got a Matrix article on the cover, an UnWired supplement attached, and 2 nice little articles to get the issue started, can't wait to read more. But alas, I'll have to do the exact thing I just said I couldn't do and wait until the NCAA championship game is over. In the meantime, here's a quick description of 2 aforementioned articles.

1. The Shape of Things to Come - Fuck the Bell Curve, it's time for the Well Curve, where the middle grows the slowest and the ends do the opposite. There are two possibilities, either the Well Curve is a permanent state and businesses are basing decisions on faulty premises, or the Well Curve only exists in times of transition (which I actually thought of before they mentioned it in the article) and our current society is just attempting to get back to a steady state. Wonder how the "Power Curve" influences this?

2. Nick Denton, Blog Mogul - This year, Denton wants to intoduce 3 new sites:
a) a travel blog
b) a consumer guide for frugal millionaires
c)a high class erotica site linking to the best porn on the web.

Hmmm....I'm interested in two of the three, and let's just say there ain't 7, or even 6, figs in my salary.

Dude. It's been done

I don't care if Kansas wins tonight or not, but before Kirk Hinrich leaves N'awlins, "can we all get together and decide what he's doing with his hair? Stevie Nash should just go ahead and send the telegram: "Dude. It's been done. Change the wig." But Hinrich has even more of a Prince Valiant thing going; and we're wondering: How does this play in the hot nightspots of Lawrence, Ks? Is this what constitutes a fly haircut?"

- Brian Murphy (ESPN Page 2)

That game didn't really happen, right?

We weren't down 30 at half and then 45 a few minutes later were we? Good, cause being at that game would have sucked. I think Saturday's game was best summed up when somebody brought up Rock and Jock basketball on MTV.

For those of you who never saw it, at the end of each half, a 25 point basket (which was 25 feet in the air...I think) was lowered and suddenly a team that was down by 50 pts could go into halftime with the lead. All we needed Saturday was a few minutes with the 25 point basket. Although the way we were shooting, it might have taken us more than a few minutes to make a shot. Oh well, that's all in the past. I'm just hoping Kansas beats Syracuse by about 60 points to save some face.

Luckily, the weekend was saved with some great music, here's some of the "off the beaten path" (read: not Bourbon St) clubs that I thought were cool.
Cafe Brasil - okay setting, cute girl working the bar, and great indie rock by Mexico 1910 (Warning, couldn't find the band's site, so here's some general info)
The Spotted Cat Had some sweet Latin jazz going, the club had a very global feel to it.

Bourbon Bound

In about an hour I'll be off to N'awlins to watch MU take on Kansas in the Final Four. As of right now, I don't have tickets, I don't have a hotel room, I'm not sure who I'll see down there, and as of about 5 mins ago I didn't even have directions. And yet, there's a sense that everything's gonna work out alright - ah, to be young and stupid. (Did I mention that next week is gonna be chaos at work...)

Oh yeah, and I haven't started on my taxes yet either

How to create a T-shirt ideavirus

1. Find a unique pop-culture reference that relates to the subject of your shirt.
2. Make up a creative insult or compliment.
3. Finish with an insider's way of identifying with your subject.
4. Reference time and event detail.
5. Post link to shirt on subject related message board
6. Enrage an entire community who didn't get the joke.

Go MU!